DEMARQUET'S ROLE IN THE STRUGGLE: Manuela

On May 8, 1827, from Quito, in a communication for the
Secretary of State, he transcribed an official letter of General Juan
José Florès with important news.

Barrios

He and his family had now settled in Quito, in the neighborhood
near the cathedral. They had their fourth child in July.
Jorge Moreno Egas, Vecinos
de la Catedral de Quito bautizados entre 1801 y 1831,
1984 69-70 Such domestic concerns may explain why, at
some point in this year, he seems to have once again retired:

We believe that... since 1827 he had left the army, as in
the following year he petitioned General Juan José Florez
[sic], leader of the South, for a job and made it known to his
friend and boss Bolivar, who answered with the utmost kindness See
letter of January 29, 1829.

In the fall of 1827, Bolivar summoned
(albeit with honeyed, lover's words) Manuela Saenz to Bogotá
from Quito. The choice of her escort must have been obvious on two
points: not only was Demarquet now one of Bolivar's most trusted
aides, but he was her near-relation by marriage.

In Quito's close, closed society,
Demarquet and his wife would have known the Saenz's as a matter of
course, even had José Maria Saenz not been married to Mme.
Demarquet's sister. As it is, that relationship was close enough that
several years later Saenz would stand godfather to their youngest
daughter. Years later, their oldest son would marry his granddaughter
and live in what, at this time, was still the Saenz's house.

The Demarquets certainly would have
known Manuela, though probably not the husband she had left in 1822.
What did they think of Manuela's public and unapologetic adultery?
Probably Demarquet, a Parisian and himself a child of divorce, was
less scandalized by it than his wife, raised in a devoutly Catholic,
provincial society. Too, the fact that her lover was the Liberator
might have erased all moral scruples; after all, like her, Demarquet
was devoted to Bolivar.

In the event, Manuela's escort was not
only a trusted aide, but someone from her own social circle. If
Demarquet was retired at that point, this would have also have freed
him for what was not, after all, a military mission.

She planned to leave at the start of
December:

Nature offered an omen of the challenges that awaited
her. On November 15, 1827, some two weeks before the anticipated
start of her journey, an earthquake hit New Granada. The quake
rattled cities, towns, and villages; it severely damaged several
churches and houses in Bogotá. Saenz nevertheless proceeded
with her plans to leave in December, heading northward...

Her request [later on the journey] for fourteen
mules-"eight for baggage and six for riding"-suggests the
size of her entourage.

Van Hagen's description of that trip
purports to be history; there is at least enough of that in this
highly colored account for the reader to learn what conditions then,
and Manuela, were like:

So she left, as she had promised. And with a familiar
retinue: a squadron of lancers to guard her, much of Bolivar's
personal equipment that he had left behind in the rapidity of his
movements, the strongboxes of his private archives which she stiffly
guarded like a Pandora's box, the mules loaded with the traveling
trunks of her wardrobe, and the slaves and the servants....

It was a long and frightful journey. It would have been
bad enough in its thousand miles when the roads had been the King's
Highway, paved with stone, its bridges kept in repair, and its
taverns operating under royal license. Now it was a small
hell-journey. There was little or no food; bridges destroyed during
the war remained unrepaired; gangs of discharged soldiers infested
the highways, waylaying any who did not take the precaution to go
well armed.

Murray and Pike point out another
danger for the expedition: their first destination was Pasto:

Long a royalist redoubt, the Pasto Province as a whole
had been conquered-indeed, bludgeoned into submission-by Bolivar's
army. Its surviving inhabitants no doubt still burned with the memory
of the cruelties they had endured, and it is unlikely they would have
been particularly pleased to learn of Bolivar's mistress among them.
Saenz must have been mindful of this and may well have chosen to
travel in disguise. She was in the city of Pasto itself, in any case,
by the fifth of January.

Van Hagen continues:

All along the way General Bolivar had alerted his
officers to be on watch for the caravan of Manuela. More than that:
for when she reached the verdant Cauca valley on her way to the small
colonial city of Popayan, a letter of encouragement, in his own hand,
awaited her.

So it went on day after day, through the verdant valleys,
up the sides of the Andes, down again into the gorges of rushing
rivers. Christmas of 1827 came and went. Nothing marked it but the
steady fall of rain, a rain which had usurped the place of the sun.
The climate and the sullenness of the people had a depressing effect
on everyone. Manuela must have wondered about the strange alchemy of
love. For love and love alone sustained her; the feeling of being
wanted was an elixir in her that gave her courage to go on. Simon's
letter, read and reread, lay under her military pelisse: “ . .
. your love revives a life that is expiring. I cannot live without
you. Come. Come to me. Come now.”

One month and nine days after leaving Quito - a few days
beyond the New Year of 1828 - the mule caravan came to the flat
environs of Bogotá. The animals, mud-splattered and weary,
galled by saddle sores from the long ride, seemed to sense the end of
the journey. At Cuatro Esquinas - The Four Corners - the caravan came
to the stone-paved road, here still called the King's Highway. A
little settlement strung out along the road, thick mud walls and
dun-colored., windowless houses thatched with straw, huddled among
the agave plants.

The lancers unwound their legs from the saddle pommels,
swung their feet into stirrups, straightened their jaguar-skin shakos
and lifted up their steel-tipped bamboo shafts, on which hung limply
the gonfalons of the Republic; they prepared for their entrance into
the capital. Still the pattern of their reception did not change.
People emerged briefly from their houses and looked at the squadron,
then quickly, sullenly, went back inside and barricaded the doors.

The earth, too, was unsmiling. The light of a rainy sky
trembled on the willows, shedding verdurous gloom over the green
savannahs. Even the chattering Jonotas, who usually could extract
humor from the most terrible of moments, had fallen silent....

The narrow streets of Bogotá were empty as they
entered. The sun, breaking through the heavy mist, glistened moistly
on the wet cobblestones; for a moment it highlighted the squat
color-splashed buildings; then it disappeared, and its place was
usurped by the mist. Manuela, who had lived amidst the gay Sevillian
architecture of Lima, was depressed by her first view of the capital
of Gran Colombia. She could hardly believe that it had a population
of twenty thousand. The streets were so narrow that if one were
sufficiently long-armed he might meet the hand of his neighbor
stretched out from the other side. The buildings had nothing of the
airy gayness of Lima, they were box-like, heavy, of thick-walled
adobe construction easily converted into massive fortresses once the
great doors were closed. The windows, heavily barred or grilled, were
without glass; the cold Bogota air (as well as the curiosity of the
passers-by) was met by screens of thickly starched muslin.

Bogotá lay at the foot of mountains that reared up
behind the city. Its principal street, the Gale de Comercio, ran with
an un-erring straightness through its heart; and along it was a
monotonous line of buildings the stores all barred with grills as if
they were barracks. Of God, Bogotá had a divine sufficiency.
The principal buildings were churches or convents six for monks, four
for nuns, and two (the College of the Holy Rosary was the most famed)
for schools of higher learning. Bogotá, as Manuela was soon to
learn forcibly, was intensely religious; despite twenty years of war,
one third of the real estate in the capital was still in the hands of
the Church.

The squadron, with Colonel Demarquet in the lead
position, emerged from the winding Calle de Florian and clattered in
the great plaza, scattering on its way a few Indians who had braved
the sharp cold rain to draw water from the fountain in the center.
The plaza was the amphitheater of Bogotá; markets were held
there on Fridays, religious processions when the divine calendar
decreed it, and bullfights when bulls could be found. And now as the
reign of terror gripped the land, it was the arena for public
executions. The Cathedral, stately and massive, was at one end;
governmental buildings, not in the least different from any of the
other one-storied structures of the capital, flanked the other sides.

Colonel Demarquet summoned with his mutilated left hand
one of the Indians. The man snatched the sodden hat from his head,
pulled at the rug-like ruana draped across his shoulders, and
in proper humility listened to the questions. Did he know where the
Liberator, General Bolivar, was staying at this moment? Was he at his
manor house the Quinta or was he at the Palace of San Carlos? The
Indian suggested he must be living at the Quinta, for the Colonel
could see that Bogota had been rocked only recently by a terrible
earthquake, which had left many of the churches topless and the
governmental palace in partial ruins.

Manuela would have preferred to go to the Palace,
anywhere other than the Quinta. After the long journey, she had need
of the ministry of Jonotas - to be bathed and perfumed with verbena
water, to have her artful pastel make-up applied, to slip out of her
riding clothes and be enfolded into some cashmere affair that would
give her body grace and poise. It was - need the Colonel be
reminded? - almost two years since she had been seen by the General.

Demarquet was a soldier. He had his orders; and the
orders were to bring Manuela to his General at once on arrival. While
he was, as a Frenchman, delighted to be taking some part in an
affaire de coeur, he would in this instance follow exactly his
commands from Bolivar. To the Quinta!

With night hanging its blue veils over the streets of
Bogotá, the squadron went on its way. The stores were closed,
the narrow sidewalks silent and deserted; only a few of the streets
were pallidly lit by small candles which flickered behind glass
globes. People who ventured abroad were accompanied by a servant, who
led the way with a small light to break a darkness as black as a
wolf's mouth.

The villa of Bolivar - the Quinta - lay north of the
city. The squadron clattered along the cobblestones, the while raising
a regiment of barking dogs, crossed the Carmen Bridge which spanned
the San Agustin River, and made for the suburbs.

On a rise of ground partially enveloped in mist was the
Quinta, It lay at the base of a gigantic mountain, at the mouth of
the Boqueron. Through this gap in the mountains, heavy,
moisture-laden fog clouds drifted in to bank the city. Ribands of fog
drifted through the cedars, the oaks, the stately cypresses. The
trees were covered with aerial parasites that verdured their host
plants in gray-green color; these gathered the mist and gave it off
as tinkling rain. Buried in the mass of foliage was the villa,
brilliant with lights. Sounds of laughter drifted across the night,
joining the croaking of the frogs.

"Halt!"

The voice of the sentry cut across the night like a whip
slashing the air.

"Halt!"

And soldiers, rifles at ready, poured out of the
guardhouse near the gate. They surrounded the squadron.

“Who lives?" queried a disembodied voice, as
shadows became men and men became bayonet-tipped guns.

"The Liberator."

The officer of the guard moved forward, waved his lamp in
Colonel Dernarquet's face. There was instant recognition. And a
salute. He moved around to the others, examined their papers. He then
held his light up to Manuela.

The startled officer saw a self-possessed woman in her
thirties looking down on him with a strange, enigmatic smile. She was
dressed in a hussar's uniform, blood-red pants, skintight and braided
in black arabesques, a military pelisse, and black military
jackboots, whose golden spurs gave out, as the horse stirred
restlessly, a sound like the tinking of a small golden bell. A brace
of brass Turkish pistols, cocked and ready for use, was at her knees.
And, as if her attractive face did not suggest that she was indeed
woman, coral earrings dropped from her ears. A woman, dressed like a
hussar, riding at night - the officer was almost ready to begin a
lengthy questioning when Colonel Demarquet, having enjoyed the moment
long enough, leaned from his horse and said, in a confidential tone,
“This, Sefior Capitan, is La Saenz.”

A few weeks later Demarquet was back in
Quito. Whatever gratitude Bolivar felt for his accompanying Saenz was
probably expressed in person and does not appear in their
correspondence. But the warmth between them is particularly apparent
in a very unusual note from Bolivar which references Demarquet's
contacts with Florès.

Bogotá, January 29, 1828

To Colonel Carlos Eloy Demarquet

Quito.

My dear Demarquet:

I am answering your kind letter which I received the day
before yesterday together with a copy of the official letter which
you sent in answer to Florès. I certainly appreciate the
deference which Florès has shown regarding the destiny of my
aide-de-camp; I also must say I have not planned any yet, because I
do not know what employment you desire to have in this department
where you have established your residence; but with you too this is
so: today I leave aside what you asked yesterday, I have not decided
anything without knowing from you yourself. Tell me what destiny I
can give you that is within my power.

I am very happy to know you are satisfied with the choice
of General Florès.

Repeat to them my order with respect to the deputies to
the big convention: let them come and as soon as possible.

Please give a thousand tendernesses to your family, to
your good mother-in-law, whom I never forget, and believe me your
friend.